


Simulation Theory

by moroder



Category: Slime Rancher (Video Game)
Genre: Developing Relationship, Drama Again Why Can't This Author Have Nice Things, F/M, Gen, Slimeulation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-05
Updated: 2019-12-07
Packaged: 2021-02-25 22:28:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,493
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21682981
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moroder/pseuds/moroder
Summary: Beatrix gets stuck inside the Slimeulation and meets an unusual inhabitant.
Relationships: Viktor Humphries & Beatrix LeBeau
Comments: 4
Kudos: 35





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> fic title is a reference to Muse album of the same name  
> and well what can i say i like writing drama where there's none. just

It was probably the first time in Beatrix’ life that she woke up face buried in a rock.

She didn’t actually wake up from sleep; she regained consciousness. It happened before that she was going into knockout and opened her eyes to see her own house – mostly thanks to her compassionate neighbors. But a rock was nowhere near a soft pillow, neither by texture nor by location in world.

She turned to her back, and the blue sky blinded her with its shining, making her cover her face with a palm. In the next moment, she threw her palm off, unable to believe her eyes.

The sky wasn’t just blue – it was traversed with a bright cyan grid. The pixel clouds were slowly floating across the air, looking unlike anything you could imagine while usually watching clouds pass by.

The girl tore her head off the rocks - which wasn’t exactly pleasant and made her vision blur - and looked around the area. She was near one of the Slimeulation portals where a portal to Ash Isle was located in real world. There were no slimes in her line of sight, but she would’ve undoubtedly find some if she stepped outside. The VacPack lay near Beatrix, as if someone carefully unstrapped it; she got up, took the device and reattached it to herself as usual.

The VacPack was empty, unlike Beatrix’ mind that was full of questions. She set the VacPack cannon aside and leaned against the rocks, trying to collect her thoughts. Her watch told her it was 07:14, and not so long – namely around 20:30 — she had entered the Slimeulation for testing. It went the usual way, glitch slimes disguised themselves as everything around; at approximately midnight, the digitarr rifts started opening. They were the reasons for Beatrix to fall into the Slime Sea as she jumped around, trying to avoid the corrupted slimes.

That was the catch. Usually when something happened to her in the Slimeulation, something that could’ve caused nasty consequences in real world, her session simply ended and brought Beatrix back to Viktor’s Lab. She also didn’t black out and just watched the simulation around her unveil like morning fog.

Bea thought herself to have caught some sort of a glitch, and her session has restarted, although under abnormal conditions. Perhaps she should simply wait and see the exit open? With a positive mindset, she grabbed the VacPack cannon and headed outside.

* * *

When the first bug report arrived, Viktor didn’t pay much attention to it.

He got used to the Slimeulation being quite a bugged compilation of features; glitch slimes and digitarr were a direct proof of that. The first months of working gave Viktor a lot more reports than nowadays, so he put up with isolated malfunctions and usually read the bug reports in the morning, not instantly as they arrived.

This morning wasn’t different. Among the usual amount of glitch slime reports, a unique error stood out. Viktor saw it for the first time; he squinted with distrust and refreshed the reports page. Nothing added and nothing vanished from the list, so he had to believe his eyes.

“What could happen with a session to halt its termination,” the scientist mumbled, entering the password. The system beeped in a welcome and exposed its data before him; the Slimeulation took up insane amount of data, but Viktor knew where to look.

The current user’s file – the only one by default – was created yesterday at 20:32 from the usual place, namely his lab at the bottom of Slime Sea. This file was still active despite being created more than twelve hours ago.

“But it is alright,” Viktor hummed, looking through the code strings. “Presence simulation successful, the user is active at the moment. What could go… oh, I see.”

Indeed, at 00:50 a control failure over simulation was registered inside the Slimeulation, and Beatrix was supposed to be logged off. For some reason, however, it didn’t happen, and she was still inside. At least the file claimed her to be all right inside the virtual reality. All other variables seemed to have been reset as if the session was started anew.

Curious thing, Viktor thought back then. Though, if the system attempted a restart after failure, it could be on the right track. The problem was not an emergency, unlike some other stuff that couldn’t wait, so Viktor had to stay and attend to it instead of going to the Lab.

He also reassured himself that Beatrix was well-built and quite hard-to destroy despite her sweetness, and she would be able to handle the Slimeulation on her own until he arrives.


	2. Chapter 2

At some point Beatrix began wondering whether she was asleep and unable to wake up. After another knockout, she expected the surroundings to successfully disappear and turn into the Lab but… they didn’t. She came to her senses closer to her supposed home location – in the Dry Reef, although the Slimeulation lacked the Ranch and fenced the area with a tall white debug wall.

Another difference that stood out was a man towering above and staring at her. As she opened her eyes, he flinched and exclaimed:

“God, you’re alive! I thought you’d never wake up.”

He pulled away and gave her a hand to help her get up. Seeing her confusion, he sighed, took her by the arm and placed her on her feet; Bea yanked away her hand immediately after that and took a couple of steps back, keeping a distance and ready to get running at any moment. Seeing that, the stranger crossed his arms and frowned.

“Look, I know you don’t expect to see another person here. But I also didn’t expect that! I didn’t think anyone else could be sent here. What’s your name?”

Beatrix watched him and took her time to answer. The guy looked like a regular slime rancher: a VacPack on his back, a farm jacket and grey working pants tucked in high boots; blond scorched hair – probably after meeting boom slimes; a couple of bruises on chocolate skin, just like Beatrix had but without plaster. As if they were really of the same nature.

“Fine, I’ll start so you can trust me. OK? My name’s Mari, and I used to be a slime rancher a while ago, until I got there. Your turn.”

“Uh… fine. I’m Beatrix and I’m testing the Slimeulation by request of…”

“…a very good friend, huh?” the guy smirked, and an unpleasant feeling poked Bea in the chest. “Lemme guess. He asked you to help out, he would be soooo grateful for that, right?”

“Why do you need to know that?”

“Because I want to see if our situations are the same. Seems like it’s true.”

“I don’t understand…”

“Yeah right, I didn’t understand much as well. I mostly couldn’t grasp why he would do that to me.”

“Who, Viktor?”

“Yes,” Mari grimaced, “that’s the man. I guess he got rid of you too.”

He was pouring out information in a casual manner, but for Beatrix it was too unexpected to devour it so fast. Mari claimed Viktor to have sent and abandoned him here forever. But how could it happen? To connect to and stay in the Slimeulation, one would have to use a virtual reality pad, like she did. And if the user stayed like in the simulation for a long time, at the end it would affect their well-being, and the system would kick them for losing consciousness.

“Lemme guess. You’re thinking about how I’ve been here for such a long time and still not disconnected?”

“Correct,” Bea said in distrust, shifting her weight from one leg to another.

“The answer is simple. I don’t exist anymore in the outside world.”

“What do you mean - don’t exist?”

“I mean what I said. This virtual reality can copy your identity and leave the duplicate here, caring none about the body and real world. I don’t even know where my body went, I haven’t seen it since!”

“Wait. If the simulated identity is a copy, how can you know what happened to your body?” Beatrix said with confusion.

“But that’s logical, Beatrix! Why else would he send me here like that and keep the body? He must’ve got rid of it and left me here. For a man like Viktor it would be inhumane to simply kill off a person. I could still play some role in his testing.”

The girl refused to believe his new companion’s words. Although, her loyal attitude for Viktor aside, Mari could turn out to be right.

Her thoughts carried her throughout the last month. After usual big report sending, Viktor called her (an unusual thing to happen as it was mostly Bea who called to chat) and asked her out for a quiet evening. Nothing supernatural, just some time to talk and spend together. Despite Bea not really hoping for him to come, since he was always so busy, he had actually tore himself from work; they spent the night sitting on a cliff in the Indigo Quarry, discussing their past before the Far Far Range and everything left behind. Beatrix found out that Viktor could talk a lot about his personal life as well as science; she liked the slimeologist’s company – and he liked her company too, so they arranged a similar meeting every next week.

Now, as Mari’s words cut into the image of this kind of shy but adorable lonely scientist, it was hard to pick up the pieces of this image.

* * *

At seven p.m. Viktor finally made it to his underwater lab. He had absolutely no doubts that Bea’s tabby slimes would be the only ones to meet him here. However, as he stepped off the teleporter, a motionless figure lying in front of the screens caught his attention.

 _I’ve checked it, I’ve checked everything_ , the scientist kept telling himself, pacing towards the virtual reality pad. All systems were online and running, but it still didn’t let Bea exit the Slimeulation as intented, and that’s why she lay unconscious at the most dangerous place.

Viktor kneeled before her and touched her wrist carefully. She was alive, but her breathing and pulse were incredibly slow. As if experiencing an artificial coma. He looked up at the monitors; somewhere in the corner of it, a small window was open, showing current session status. The main info it held was that the user experienced a knockout. That meant that the system failed to disconnect Beatrix once again and end the session, thus giving her another try.

The only reasonable solution to this seemed to be a power outage, but it was also the most dangerous one. Viktor never told Beatrix about it, but her connection to the Slimeulation was the most direct and unprotected – and most stable. He never assumed the logging off problems to occur; he still didn’t understand what caused them and was almost giving up.

As the scientist paced around in thoughts, almost two hours passed. He only stopped when he heard the hungry slimes messing around and trying to jump out of corral to get into the coop. It took Viktor about half an hour to power up the local drone and reconfigure it to feed the slimes with chickens. When he looked at the main screens again, the user session told him that Beatrix regained consciousness inside the Slimeulation. It had no positive effect on the real Beatrix nevertheless: she was still pale and barely breathing.

Unfortunately, Viktor could only help her by considering the options of logging her off with least brain trauma. Deep in his thoughts, he didn’t hear the teleport – this time, the one from Bea’s ranch.

“So that’s where she goes when she won’t respond to my calls!” an upset voice ringed through the air, making Viktor jump and turn around.

“What… are you doing here?”

“I may be worrying! My, should I say, business partner won’t respond for the second day straight, which is completely out of her character. I waste my time to find out whether she’s okay, and you guys are having secret affairs here, huh?”

Although both Viktor and Mochi Miles have been in the Far Far Range for a long time, they’ve never met each other face to face. The scientist didn’t consider it worth his time, and so did Mochi. But the third person, now lying helpless on the pad, suddenly brought them together.

“Nothing secret, I just…”

“You just share your tech stuff with her and not me,” the girl mumbled and crossed her arms. “I can pay you a lot more than her, you know.”

“It’s not about money,” Viktor sighed tiredly. “Beatrix helps me testing an important project from time to time. When she has the time, of course. Tell me, would you be willing to waste your own time on this?”

“No, I wouldn’t. But that doesn’t answer the question about why she’s been missing for the second day, and now I find her here. With you.”

Miles’ voice sounded like a strict professor for whom Viktor failed to write an assignment.

“Look, I can fill you in on the details.”

“Wow, are you that desperate?” Mochi smirked.

“You can say so. The project Beatrix was testing is called the Slimeulation.” The girl snorted at this word. “Or the virtual slime simulation, to be precise. The tester’s task is to find slimes who don’t match the standard.”

“Glitches?”

“Yes. And Beatrix entered the simulation as usual, but something went wrong this time, and she has been stuck there for almost twenty-four hours. I’ve checked all systems, and there’s been no errors or failures. Save for failure of the utility that ends the session upon dying inside the simulation.”

“So she dies inside your Slimeulation and can’t exit, right?”

“Yes.”

“Tried turning off and on?”

“Not an option. It will result in irreparable brain damage with a great probability.”

“Oh come on. You could plug in such an important person in a safer mode, huh!”

“I know. What are you telling me…”

Viktor put his head in his hands and sat down on the stairs near the virtual pad entrance.

“You see, if I knew such things could take place, I would have never let her in there.”

“I think you would. Scientific interest, stuff like that,” Mochi muttered, immediately causing Viktor’s glare.

“Don’t you think that some scientists keep their heads straight and avoid sending their dear ones on dangerous missions?”

“You didn’t avoid that, still! See if you can fix that,” she exclaimed in response.

The scientist watched her for several seconds but then turned away in silence, accepting defeat. Silence fell for a good portion of time; both were reflecting on possible ways to resolve the situation.

“Hey Vik, is there a second entrance to Slimeulation?”

He looked up at her, puzzled – both because of his name’s unusual form and the question’s subject.

“There is in fact a way to plug in the second user into the first one’s session… but it requires reconfiguring, and…”

“Get it going. And quit your terms, I’m good with tech as well. Just call things by their functions.”

Mochi made a gesture of rolling up her sleeves, although they were already up. Seeing Viktor’s confusion, she exclaimed louder and more encouraging:

_“Start working, Humphries!”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mochi came out almost jealous of Beatrix, it's an accident


	3. Chapter 3

Every time Beatrix entered the Slimeulation, she had some sort of strategy. Find the nearest debug spray node, then look for curious and misplaced objects in her location; and as the time comes, move closer to exit and return home.

Now her strategy evolved into ‘get out or die trying’. The fifth attempt didn’t bring any luck again, and this time she woke up in Moss Blanket, among the honey slimes and pink flowers forests.

“Howdy again. Trying to escape now too?”

Mari also didn’t go anywhere. The girl was reluctant to even stay near him at their first meeting, but as time passed, she got used to him and kept pretending to take it as normal. She wakes up; Mari welcomes her and asks if she’s tired of jumping into the Sea. Bea shakes her head, finds the nearest cliff to drown herself, and the world goes black. Everything stays the same.

“You know, we used to be very good friends with him for a while. Just before he left me here.”

This time, Mari was following Beatrix through the green grass patches, keeping up with her at ease, although her pace was incredible.

“We were… how do I say that… friends? No, that’s too simple and dull. Friends like… the ones you could die for. At least I thought it was mutual. I really wanted it to be mutual.”

“Didn’t he?” Bea said over the shoulder, not pausing.

“I don’t know. I guess his attitude towards me was also nice. Until he changed his mind, that’s the catch.”

Talking non-stop before that sentence, Mari suddenly fell silent. The girl felt uneasy because of it, so she stopped and turned to her companion.

“Look, really, I’m sorry…”

“Sorry about what? Me being abandoned by the best person in my life?” The guy chuckled. “I got over it. I’m more worried now about how he did the same thing to you. If he managed to replace me so fast and now got rid of the replacement, what’s next?”

“What do you mean… replaced you?”

“What do you think, Beatrix? That you were the only one trying to stir up Viktor Humphries and get to know him personally?”

She shut her lips tight and turned away. A question she couldn’t answer.

“Not the only one, and not the last one for sure,” Mari purred.

They approached the giant fallen tree that served as a bridge across the lake, and Bea remembered how in the real world this path used to lead to a static teleporter to her home. No such luck here. Her companion kept muttering stuff about past sins and unfortunate surprises… She didn’t listen. She quit paying attention to his words until he grabbed her hand and pulled her back. The girl shook him off in irritation, to no avail.

“What now?”

“See, that’s a human. There was someone!”

Beatrix turned to the direction he pointed at and saw no one.

“Are you sure?” she asked wearily.

“Yes of course I am sure! I used to believe my eyes in most cases!”

Indeed, someone’s head appeared behind a tree, and then the whole figure followed. Bea recognized the person immediately.

“How… did she get here…” she whispered, but Mari heard her perfectly.

“You know her?”

“Yes, that’s… one of my rancher neighbors. I thought she’d never get near Viktor and his lab…”

“Oooh, see, I told you. I told you so…”

“Told me what?” Bea spat out with slight anger, and the guy sneered.

“That he’ll be quick to find a replacement for you.”

That was a point she couldn’t take. Turning to Mari sharply, the girl grabbed him by the jacket collar but didn’t manage to hit him or say anything.

“Hey Beatrix! I’m over here, can you hear or see me?”

She had to leave that alone for a while. Mochi stood way close than before, almost ten meters from them; she was dressed in the usual fashion, but a blueish VacPack looked off in her image for Bea. The quicksilver rancher was trying her best to get at least someone’s attention.

“Contact!” Mochi exclaimed as Beatrix turned to her. “Look, come with me, okay? You okay being here so long?”

“Mochi, how did you get here?” Bea said with confusion but also a bit of delight, stepping away from Mari. “Only one person can be plugged into this place… how did you find out about this location?”

“He replaced you,” Mari hummed.

“I’m, well, you know I’m the best hacker in the world,” Mochi responded with significant pride. “I actually came to see where you went for the second day straight, found a teleporter and then… Wasn’t too hard to enter for me, you know.”

“She’s lying,” Mari continued quietly. “One can’t just enter as the second user when the first one is logged in. She couldn’t do that on her own.”

“You doubt me? I’ve talked to Viktor about sharing some tech stuff earlier. And it was purely out of common courtesy, because hacking in without any notice isn’t nice! If it’s not the only remaining thing to do.”

“See how cocky and experienced she is. She’s definitely closer to his spirit if she’s capable of these operations.”

“Hey, there’s a lot I can tolerate, but I’m talking to you too!” Mochi yelled with audible irritation. “Who the hell is that guy? There’s not supposed to be anyone but Beatrix!”

“That’s right. She knows that you’re here and came to convince you that this is how it’s supposed to be. And he never ever told you about his past sins,” Mari went on and on. “The main thing is to make you feel not abandoned. That it’s right. It worked on me for a while at the very beginning.”

“Oh come on, quit listening to that prick!” Miles snapped. “You believe him and not me?”

“Mochi…” Beatrix finally spoke herself, “did you really come here on your own?”

“Well yeah, I already told y-”

_Mochi, can you hear me?_

A painfully familiar voice pierced their ears. Despite the connection being held through Mochi, everyone heard these words as good as if they all had transmitters.

_Mochi? Should I try a different frequency?_

“No, wait,” she only managed to say before Mari darted off and attacked her. He grabbed her by the jacket lapels and lifted her as if she had no weight at all; she held onto his wrists in a futile attempt to save herself. In a matter of seconds Mari dragged her to a cliff and threw her into the Slime Sea; Bea chased after but couldn’t do anything but watch Mochi fall into the salty void with a horrified expression on her face – probably for the first time Bea saw it.

Only after her body disappeared under the water surface, Mari turned and walked away. Beatrix stood still, eyeing the point where Mochi met her simulated death; too many emotions and thoughts ate her soul, fighting and chasing each other, but one single emotion prevailed: a wish to be home again in her bed, blanket over her head and away from anyone’s problems. Just… be alone again.

“Beatrix… I’m sorry it all happened like this. I'm… really sorry. I hoped for the best.”

Mari’s voice sounded infinitely far, tearing through the fog. He touched Bea’s elbow, and she turned around.

“I didn’t think he really is such a jerk.”

“Mari,” she said hoarsely, “did you try to get out on your own?”

“Yeah, sure. I tried a lot of stuff before meeting you… Nothing worked.”

“There’s got to be a way out. For extreme conditions, inside the Slimeulation itself.”

“Maybe, but we’re just regular users. We wouldn’t find them.”

Bea glanced at him with a challenge in her eyes.

“There’s nothing impossible.”

* * *

“Can you imagine? I was – _I_ was thrown into the sea!”

At least ten minutes have passed after an emergency shutdown of Mochi’s session, but Viktor still couldn’t get anything useful out of her feral wrath.

“Mochi…”

“Just… thrown like I’m nothing! You think that’s an okay thing?! Boot me back into that thing, I’m gonna-”

“Please stop and listen! The second user’s connection was a single-use procedure.”

“W… what?! You couldn’t proof-read that part of your decisions too?”

“Say what you want about my programming, it will not change the fact that no one else can enter the Slimeulation. So give up your thoughts on revenge and concentrate on our problem.”

“Humphries… you keep amazing me.” Fortunately, his words affected the girl’s temper, and her face slowly shifted from upset scarlet to her normal color. “Okay. Fine. Count me as chill now, though I’m nowhere near chill.”

“Mochi, please, the main thing – who threw you into the sea? Beatrix?”

“You doubt her ability to do so?”

“I do not, and that’s the point. She could throw _me_ off a cliff in certain circumstances.”

“Yeah… right, I guess.” Mochi shrugged. “But it wasn’t her, yeah. It was a guy. I was shocked to see him there with her…”

“Wait, what do you mean? There was someone else inside?”

“Yes, I’m telling you that I was surprised to see someone else beside me and her!”

“But that’s not possible… could that be an intrusion?” Viktor frowned and started pacing around the room. “Could you describe the man?”

“Well… a regular guy. Tall, brown skin, blond hair. Dressed like a ranch worker. He kept mumbling something all the time I tried to reach out for Bea. Vik, are you listening?”

She slapped Viktor’s hand as he walked past her another time, and he stopped with enlightenment on his face.

“Yes, I am… I think I know what the problem is.” He suddenly darted off towards the computer blocks. “Mochi, can you check the latest backup date? Wait, no need to, I’ll do it myself.”

Viktor jumped from one block to another with a quicksilver slime speed, and Mochi could only watch him hastily trying to reconfigure something in the terminals.

“Vik… are you handling it well alone?” she asked with disbelief as he carried a heavy box with cables dragging on the ground past her.

“Yes. I know what to do,” he smiled. Mochi shivered upon seeing this pure childish smile, barely holding her gaze on him. “I will now enter the Slimeulation myself. I reconfigured everything needed, just a couple of things need adjusting. Can I borrow your VacPack?”

“Hey, and why can you enter it and I can’t? Are you special or something, or did you lie to me?”

“Yes, I am special,” Viktor kept grinning, plugging the cable box into the computer blocks. “I am the administrator.”


	4. Chapter 4

God, it’s been so long since he visited this place.

Technically, Viktor was the first tester of his creation, a pioneer of a kind. He was also the first person to enter the Slimeulation in the Admin Mode.

Implementing the said mode was a wise decision in the past; it was the last working strategy for the scientist right now. Had he been less provident, Mochi would’ve ridiculed the living hell out of him.

No, he’d never endure working with a person like Mochi Miles. Maybe competing was an option, but not collaborating. There was a certain kind of behavior that could piss Viktor off, which was very hard to do, and Mochi managed that just fine.

Passing by the Indigo Quarry in search of required device, Viktor noticed that the place where he first met Beatrix face to face was also present in the simulation. If he would fail to get her out of here, could he at least sometimes come back and visit her here? Not out of guilty conscience, rather…

He shook his head. No, he’ll make it. Banish the pessimistic thoughts, they weren’t welcome here. Someone else would have to deal with them. Seeing a green patch on the ground, he picked up a portion of debug spray. According to Beatrix’ session data, it was almost three hours after the last restart, so the digitarr rifts could open soon.

Viktor’s pace was good, but the heavy VacPack slowed him down, and even with the yellow arrow pathfinding algorithm he spent more time than expected. He didn’t sleep for around two days straight, but as he remembered how Beatrix must’ve been feeling at this moment, he shrugged off the tiredness and went on, increasing pace. He’ll deal with this right now to sleep in peace later. Postponing this matter was surely a stupid thing to do.

Something awkward and dangerous had to happen before he would address the matter again. Sure thing.

He noticed the two standing by the big yellow arrow and examining something in the rock directly under. He knew perfectly what their reaction would be. They saw him coming from a distance but did nothing to stop him; only as he approached them, the guy put his hand on the object stuck in the rock: a metal lever.

“Don’t come closer,” he hissed. “I’ll pull it and kill us all.”

“Yes, of course. I will stay here.”

Beatrix couldn’t believe her eyes. For her it felt like a whole week passed, and the only person stayed by her side all the time, the person who kept telling her how wicked Viktor’s actions were towards her. He said it so often that Bea started to believe him; although sometimes it sounded like Mari was too centered on this topic, as if trying to keep her inside and talk out of returning to such a vile man like Humphries.

“Beatrix, are you feeling well?” Viktor started, but Mari grinned and interrupted him:

“Just fine without you. We made quite a team as you’ve abandoned us here.”

“I abandoned no one.”

“Yeah, sure. What do you think happened to Beatrix and me? You got rid of us, and now something went wrong, so you came here to fix it at our expense?”

_“Mari…”_

Bea shivered at how wearily and alien the name sounded coming from Viktor, as if he dug up a long-forgotten grave to retrieve this name and was now observing it, disgusted.

“I figured out what happened to Beatrix. Partly – to you. But I came to fix my mistakes, not create new ones.”

“Your first mistake was to send someone here and leave them forever,” Mari kept hissing viciously.

“The point is… Are you sure it really was a human?”

“W… what?”

“Mari, name at least one thing that had happened to you before you ended up here.”

“The hell…”

“Please.”

“I… We discussed some girl who was collecting the glitch slimes too fast.”

“And before that?”

“I… Where’s all this going?! I’ve been here for so long I can’t remember any past!”

“That is true. Because you have no past.”

Silence hung. Bea looked at her companion cautiously and flinched, seeing the frozen rage and confusion on his face. Viktor continued in the same calm tone:

“You did not exist until I have activated you for the first time.”

“Y-you… you’ve ruined my life and now you dare say I haven’t even existed in real life?!”

“I can prove that.”

Mari lunged at him. Just before his long tanned hands could reach the scientist's labcoat, Viktor shot him with the green substance, leaving a pixel trace in the air. The guy’s figure wavered, full of interference, and he stumbled, looking over himself; and just before he could make another attempt, the second splash of debug spray fully dissolved his body.

Bea and Viktor watched the scene sorrowfully in sync. As the pixel sparks died away, a thick blue folder appeared in Mari’s place; Viktor picked it up, dusted it off carefully and pressed to his chest.

“What… did you do to him?” Beatrix spoke, not believing her eyes.

“Error debugging. No worries, he isn’t dead,” he pointed at the folder. “We should get out of here.”

He made a step towards her, but Bea took the lever on her own.

“You’ll spray me with that thing and I’ll disappear too. I don’t exist anymore, right?” The hand that held the lever was trembling, and she felt a lump forming in her throat. “You disposed of me because I meant nothing to you anymore?”

“Beatrix, please… you do not have sufficient rights to perform this.”

Smiling softly, Viktor made another step in her direction, and one more, and ten more steps, and she was still watching him like a hunted animal. He placed a hand on the lever and another one on her shoulder; she wanted to throw it off, but something told her that there’s no sense in doing so. He pulled the lever with no effort at all, and she failed to do so together with Mari.

Blue sparks flew around them, the world turned bright cyan that Bea missed so much, and the Indigo Quarry scenery slowly dissolved into thin air, giving way to the dimness of underwater lab.

* * *

Returning to real world didn’t go that smooth for Beatrix: her body was left motionless without appropriate care for a long time, and as the virtual reality retreated, she could barely turn her head without much pain. She didn’t have to, though, as the people in the lab came to her on their own.

“Look who we have here!” Mochi exclaimed, throwing her hands theatrically. She was sitting on the stairs near the VR pad and watched Viktor running on an emergency pad next to it. When he logged off of the Slimeulation and turned off the green bubble around his head, Mochi decided that the rescue mission was a success. So she switched to Beatrix, approached her and knelt down.

“Mochi? You really came here?..”

“Who else. You think I lied to you about finding a way into this… Slimeulation of yours?”

“But you lied about finding it yourself.”

“Well… I had to make up a little of it. All for your own good!”

Bea sighed quietly. Anyway, Mochi being here meant at least that she was worrying about her life. However, it went against the things she heard from-

“Mochi, could you look for a place to put Beatrix at? I think it isn’t very comfortable to talk while lying on cold equipment…”

The girl glared at Viktor, but stood up and disappeared into the lab. It was quite hard for Bea to process anything in the real world, comparing to virtual one, so she could simply lay and hope that people would do well without her help. As Viktor picked her up, she was left with no concerns entirely.

“Vik, there’s nothing! No couches and even chairs,” Miles’ voice came over from behind the scientist’s back. He sighed and looked at Bea.

“I cannot leave you here,” he muttered. “Guess I will have to bring you home.”

Beatrix remembered with a corner of her mind that a while ago her only dream was to be home under the blankets again. And it was the best thing real world could offer her.

* * *

“So the virtual reality actually compiles a copy of someone who enters it?”

“Superficially, yes. It is all quite complicated.”

Two days after the incident, they sat on a branchy pink tree in the Moss Blanket, far off the ground and the feral largos. It wasn’t a problem for Beatrix to get up here, but for Viktor it became quite a challenge. It felt close to rock climbing with the help of a jetpack.

It was Viktor’s idea to visit this place. He explained that he rarely ever got out somewhere, and the trees of Moss Blanket were probably the tallest object in the whole Far Far Range, giving a fantastic sight to see. One could even call this place romantic.

“That’s why I was moving inside the simulation, but not on the outside? I mean, you two told me that I was lying unconscious for a long time, although I was walking inside the Slimeulation.”

“It was a malfunction. As the system registered the first logoff attempt, it tried to disconnect you, but it only succeeded for half the task. Your mind remained inside, but your body lived outside.”

“But I was actually inside all the time?”

“Yes, unfortunately enough. If not for your constant connection with the system, I would have unplugged you on my arrival to lab. I can very well explain the nature of this malfunction, by the way.”

Beatrix was waiting for him to continue, but Viktor fell silent. The giant local moon was slowly floating across the sky, partly hiding behind the nearby trees. No matter what, the nights on this planet felt like they passed by a lot faster. Perhaps the moon size had something to do about it.

“You might... want me to tell you about… him.”

“I might be.” Beatrix said it in a jokingly offended voice, but Viktor took that seriously. It was for the best, as he understood that he should better speak up, and do it now.

“I mentioned that I have simulated a significant part of my life experience to calculate the most efficient strategy for myself. It applied to all areas, including social. The easiest way was to simulate simple situations with a companion. So I had to use my own resources.”

“You…” Beatrix gasped, “ _you’ve_ created Mari! That’s why you told him that he’s never existed!”

The scientist shrugged unhappily and turned away.

“At the moment I met you inside the Slimeulation I knew what happened to you. I thought I could discuss the situation with him, set a peaceful course… but as I saw his reaction, I knew there was nothing left to say. So I saved him for later research.”

“The folder that’s left of him…”

“It was a representation of his files directory. I isolated it so he would not escape or tune into a project without me looking, like it turned out this time.”

“You mean he made it to Slimeulation on his own?”

“Hardly. I must have imported his files into it by accident, and then… things happened. According to logs, he triggered a malfunction in logoff system, but why… I honestly cannot say. To have my attention?”

“Maybe he became bored,” Bea smiled sadly, and Viktor looked at her with confusion. “You used to talk to him before, and on a frequent basis I guess. You were the whole world to him, and then you disappeared. No wonder he wanted company and hated you so much.”

She shifted her gaze far away, at the midnight skies.

“He actually thought that you sent him into the Slimeulation and abandoned him forever. He never had a chance to disprove it…” she made a pause. “Honestly, he did a great job in convincing me that you did the same in my case.”

“Really?” The scientist fluttered. “What did he say?”

“Lots of rubbish. But mostly concentrated on the fact that you imprisoned him and me in the Slimeulation because you found someone else instead of us. At some point it became unnerving, you know.”

“Constant talks about that?”

“Yeah. His jealousy is easy to understand though… Mari didn’t know that he was non-existent in real world and thought himself to be the only person you communicated with.”

“Hah, well actually… it was true until recently.”

Viktor shivered and began rolling down his labcoat sleeves. It was getting a bit cold on the treetop, but Beatrix didn’t feel that.

“Well… at least now I know you’ve had a possessive ex-boyfriend,” she poked Viktor with an elbow lightly.

“Yes, I guess so… _wait_ , what do you mean?”


End file.
